Why Don't I Recognize My Team?

These are strange times for Stanford basketball. In the past, we've entered preseasons in which the conventional wisdom was that a rebuilding season was afoot. In the fall of 1999, we had just lost four starters including Arthur Lee, the team leader. But we turned the naysayers on their heads, shared the Pac-10 title, and earned a number one seed in the tournament. In the fall of 2002, we lost Casey and Curtis to the NBA and Chris Hernandez to a broken foot. But Monty rallied the troops, Julius rose to the occasion as point guard and we fought our way to another 20-win season.

So going into this season, I heard all the haters say that losing Monty, Childress and our seniors would be devastating to the team. But as a student of history, I didn't worry because Stanford basketball always regrouped and defied preseason expectations. Well, after our first seven games, I'm not nearly as confident.

Having watched our most recent games, it just feels like there's a piece of our offense that's missing. There's Chris running the point, Rob and Matt down low, and then... a void. While Dan Grunfeld slash to the hoop to the tune of 19 ppg has been a nice surpise, this offense needs shooters. We've always had a reliable yet underrated three-point shooter, going from Peter Sauer to David Mosely toRyan Mendez to Matt Lottich. I like the potential of Tim Morris, but I haven't seen enough to be conviced that he'll be a significant contributor in the starting lineup. My problem isn't so much with our 3-4 record, it's the fact that this lineup just doesn't look like a team in the Stanford mold. I still haven't seen a posession that looked like a "Stanford possession"-- moving the ball around the perimiter, posting up down low and crisp interior passing-- all year.

Coach Johnson, I'm not ready to throw you under the bus, but you've got your work cut out for you, sir.